Chan Lowe: Florida Legislature sticks it to the teachers

Florida Legislature sticks it to the teachers

Florida Legislature sticks it to the teachers

Chan Lowe

The legislators just couldn’t bring themselves to do it. The idea of an across-the-board raise for teachers—union members—stuck in their collective craw. Because the state’s teachers haven’t received a raise in several years, they felt a certain amount of pressure to deliver (particularly from a reelection-happy Rick Scott) now that Florida’s financial picture has improved, but they weren’t going to capitulate before sticking it to ’em one last time.

That’s right, the raise wouldn’t go into effect for over a year, and it would be tied to merit-pay schemes, many of which haven’t even been formulated yet.

You’d think teachers were some kind of hideous parasite, rather than those we entrust with training our precious offspring to think, and to prepare them for productive lives. That’s right, “productive,” as in providing a competent workforce to fulfill the needs of our corporations—you know, the ones who hire all those Gucci-clad lobbyists who fill legislators’ campaign coffers.

Someday our bumbling representatives will make the connection. They may make it as soon as tomorrow, since they apparently got enough blowback on this from constituents (who don’t hold teachers in the same contempt—maybe because they’re on the front lines and see the valuable contribution they make every day) that they might revisit the petty, small-minded and vindictive conditions they placed on their lousy twenty-five hundred bucks.

Hope springs eternal. If you know that Alexander Pope wrote that, it might be because an English teacher taught it to you.